Facebook Tests Ads Within Its Marketplace Tab

Facebook is testing ads that run within Marketplace – the tab it launched late last year allowing users to buy and sell their things.

Facebook is becoming very good at finding new places for ads. And it’s constantly testing new things, despite the fact that users really don’t want any more ads in their feeds. Whether they like them or not, Facebook is going to continue to expand its ads offering in order to give its advertisers the most value for their investment, and to provide users with the best possible ads experience. Facebook‘s latest ad placement is Marketplace – a tab on the platform where users can buy and sell things.

Marketplace ads are being tested to some people who use the feature in the U.S., allowing advertisers to place ads within Marketplace free of charge. In fact, at the moment Facebook’s just treating Marketplace ads as News Feed ads in a different place – not an entirely separate ad product. It’s also not even clear if, or when, Facebook might launch them properly. As Michelle Bonner Techel, product marketing manager at Facebook explained,

[quote]We are starting a small test that shows ads to a small percentage of people using Marketplace in the U.S. and will evaluate the response before determining how we move forward,[/quote]

Marketplace might not be a huge success yet, but the company seems to think highly enough of it to add adds to it. On the other hand, Facebook makes most of its revenue from ads, and since it’s running out of ad space on News Feed, it seems desperate to find other places to show its ads – among them, Messenger of course.